Montage generation is a technique in film editing in which a series of video segments are combined into a sequence to condense time, space, and information. Cable television and satellite television providers use this technique to promote and advertise pay-per-view movies, sports games, or other premium television program services on dedicated channels called Barker channels. A customer can tune to a particular Barker channel to view a sequence of video scenes from movies, sports games, or other premium services that a television provider has selected to advertise on that channel. The television provider may add metadata to the video segments that describes the program to a customer and informs the customer as to when and how the advertised program can be obtained.
The montage that is provided on a Barker channel is manually generated by a technician who reviews each of the programs that are to be advertised, selects scenes that the technician believes will best promote each of the programs, and then strings together the video for the selected scenes within each of the programs to generate a montage that is played on the Barker channel. The particular scenes that are selected for use in the montage depend upon the technician's expertise and knowledge of the targeted market segment of customers and further depend upon meeting other objective criteria, such as ratings/content limits and time constraints on program previews. This approach is inherently limited by the technician's preferences and expertise at predicting what an average customer within the targeted market segment will find most appealing in each of the advertised programs.